Did Abraham know God's name?
Genesis credits Abraham with using Jehovah in a place name, while Exodus denies that Abraham knew God by that name.
- Textual conflict
- Interpretive tension
- The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
- Importance
- Major
- A major event or claim with wider implications.
Abraham uses the divine name, while Exodus says the patriarchs did not know God by that name. Whether knowing the name means knowing the word or knowing God in a particular role affects the conflict.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Abraham names a place with Jehovah in its name
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah–jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
God says the ancestors did not know his name Jehovah
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.
Understanding the contradiction
Genesis 22:14 attributes the naming of Jehovah-jireh to Abraham himself. The name contains the divine designation whose knowledge is disputed, and the verse presents Abraham as the actor naming the place rather than merely putting a later name into an anonymous location description.
Exodus 6:3 says God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty but was not known to them by his name Jehovah. If Abraham used that divine name to name the place, the denial of his knowing it is difficult to maintain as written. The supplied texts do not distinguish knowledge of the word from some special later knowledge of its significance. The conflict concerns the name explicitly used and explicitly denied.